


twelve midnight

by acanofpeaches (eviscerates)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cults, M/M, This does not have a happy ending. Turn back now if you want one, fairytale retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:56:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eviscerates/pseuds/acanofpeaches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zitao was the kind of boy who could get away with anything. To Sehun, it seemed as if somehow Zitao could jump - would jump - but instead of falling, he'd spread his arms and fly like a blackbird.</p><p>Or: a story of two boys - One that would do anything to fit in, and one that would do anything to save what he loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	twelve midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewritten retelling of a short story by Malinda Lo called "The Twelfth Girl". Much of this is near verbatim from her original story, though I did add my own twists, additions, and rewrites in my own style. I claim NO OWNERSHIP of this idea, premise, etc. at all. All credit goes to the original author, and the author(s) of the fairytale (The Twelve Dancing Princesses) on which the short story itself was based on. Unbeta'd, so any mistakes are on me.

Zitao was the kind of boy who could get away with anything.

That was the first thing Sehun learned when he arrived at the Soo Man School for Boys in mid-October. It wasn't only that Zitao flounted the dress code and skipped class and ignored the curfew without ever being reprimanded. There was something disqueting yet seductive about him, like walking on the edge of a cliff while gazing down at the violent beauty of the ocean breaking below. Somehow it seemed as if Zitao could jump - would jump - but instead of falling, he'd spread his arms and fly like a blackbird.

Sehun had known boys who acted like Zitao before, but never someone quite so successful at pulling it off. Zitao was definitely the most interesting thing about the S.M. school, and from the first time Sehun saw him - walking into class twenty minutes late, dressed in ripped jeans and boots instead of the uniform, his black hair tousled and wild - Sehun didn't know if he wanted to be Zitao or if he wanted to kiss him.

Zitao's friends, too, seemed to benefit from his apparent invincibility. They lived together in Seong Hall - nicknamed the Castle for the resemblance it bore to one as well as its name- a small, turreted fantasy of a dorm on the edge of campus. the Castle had twelve rooms, all singles, each taken by Zitao and his group. Everybody knew they went out dancing every night until three in the morning, and they never got caught, even though the campus gates were locked at 10 P.M., and every dorm had a resident advisor who knocked on your door if you even played your music too loud. The rumor was that Zitao had a rich father who had given so much money to S.M. that Zitao - and everybody he liked - was immune from the rules.

Sehun wanted to be immune, too. His parents had transferred him to S.M. after he had gotten in trouble at his old school in Seoul for missing curfew too many times. Sehun was pretty sure his parents had chosen S.M. because there was nothing to miss curfew for in Naju, the quiet town where S.M. was located. If Zitao somehow got off campus to party every night, Sehun wanted in, but neither Zitao nor any of his friends seemed to be the least bit interested in getting to know the new guy. Their collective cold shoulder annoyed Sehun, who was used to being noticed for all the right reasons, and it only made him more determined to figure out how they got away with what they did.

 

* * *

 

One afternoon about a week after he first arrived at S.M., Sehun walked into Naju to buy shampoo at the drugstore. As he approached the shop, he saw a blue neon hand in the window upstairs. The sign next to the hand read _Han Geng's Fortunes & Favors_. Sehun was gazing curiously at the sign - it seemed, almost, to beckon to him - when the door next to the drugstore that led upstairs opened. A boy dressed in all black barreled out onto the sidewalk, nearly knocking into Sehun.

"Hey! Watch it!" Sehun cried.

The boy didn't stop, tossing only a brief glare over his shoulder before he continued down the street in the direction Sehun had just come from. He recognized the boy; It was Jongin, one of Zitao's friends. Sehun watched Jongin disappear around he corner, then glanced at the door he had just come out of. There was a small placard in the glass window - Sale: Five Minutes for Ten Dollars. Find your Future Here. Impulsively, Sehun opened the door and ascended the creaky stairs to the palm reader's shop.

A sharp-featured man in a green velvet vest turned from the window overlooking the street when Sehun entered. The man's dark eyes narrowed on him, his close cropped black hair making his face seem severe but ageless - He could be thirty or fifty for all Sehun knew. "Can I help you?"

"Are you Han Geng?" Sehun asked, glancing around the shop. It was stuffed to the brim with knickknacks and baskets of trinkets that all made Sehun a little uneasy.

"Yes."

"I saw your sign in the window," Sehun said. "Five minutes for ten dollars."

An odd expression passed over Han Geng's face; It reminded Sehun of a key turning in a lock. "Follow me," he said.

He led Sehun through the cluttered shop to a back room hung with curtains and furnished with a small, round table and two chairs. Han Geng sat down and took a kitchen timer that seemed so out of place among the mystical wares of the shop and set it for five minutes. "Give me your hand," he said.

Sehun sat across from the fortune-teller and placed his hand in the man's. The instant they touched, Sehun felt a strange sensation run through him, as if he were a marionette and the puppeteer had tugged on his strings. He watched as the man bent over his palm, studying the lines in his skin. The rapid ticking of the timer in the background began to make Sehun nervous, as if it were counting down the seconds to - well, Sehun didn't know to what, but it was unsettling, and he had the sudden urge to yank his hand away and flee.

As if he could sense Sehun's change of heart, Han Geng tightened his grip on his hand. "You want to know about the boy who was just here," he said.

"How - how did you know that?"

"It's my job to know what brings you into my shop."

The ticking of the timer seemed to grow louder, and Sehun had the disconcerting sensation that he was shrinking while the room around him was expanding. 

"You should stay away from those boys," Han Geng said, his voice taut as a pulled bowstring.

"What boys?" Sehun's palm was sweating.

"The boys who live in the castle."

Seong Hall. The Castle. "Zitao and his friends?" Sehun asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"They're dangerous. You should stay away from them."

Sehun hated it when anyone told him what to do. "I'll hang around with whoever I want."

Han Geng gazed at him with the piercing, dark eyes of a hawk. Sehun twitched under the scrutiny and tried to pull back, but the man had his hand in a vice grip. His fingers felt numb. "They are playing with forces beyond their control," Han Geng said. "If you value your life, you will stay away from them."

The cautionary words only stoked Sehun's brimming curiosity. A growing desire to know more ignited a coal in his chest. "I thought you were supposed to tell my fortune, not give me some stupid warning."

"I'm doing both." Han Geng said, and he dropped Sehun's hand like it had suddenly become red hot.

Sehun cradled his hand to his chest - it trembled now, free from the man's iron grasp - and stood. "You're crazy," he said, though he couldn't stop his voice from wavering.

"Ten dollars," Han Geng said, his voice ringing in the small, cluttered room. "You do not want to owe me a debt."

Sehun stopped, feeling as if the man had pierced him with an invisible hook rooting him to the spot. He reached into his pocket with his other hand - the one Han Geng hadn't touched - and pulled out his wallet. He fished a ten dollar bill out and tossed it at the fortune-teller. It caught in a breeze Sehun didn't feel and fluttered to the floor.

Han Geng gave him a shrewd, unreadable smile. "You're welcome."

 

* * *

 

Everything Sehun learned about Zitao was like finding another piece of a puzzle. The problem was he had no idea what the puzzle was supposed to depict, or how the jagged edges would fit in with one another.

All the guys at S.M. had definite opinions about Zitao and his friends. They were stuck-up; they were slackers; they had daddy issues. But beneath the criticism, there was a palpable yearning to be one of them. To be part of that tight-knit pack of boys who prowled the campus like jaguars, handsome and aloof and cunning. To dance every night - no one knew where, but it had to be good - and come to breakfast smelling like last night's cologne with undone ties, leaning on each other and laughing about what they had seen and done until dawn.

Sehun soon discovered that the only way to join them was to wait for one of the twelve boys who lived in the Castle to leave S.M., and then hope that Zitao chose you to take the vacant room - And the vacant spot in his group. Two boys had left so far: Kim Kibum, last spring, and Lee Taemin, at the start of the school year in September. It didn't look like there would be any vacancies in the near future, which is why the sudden departure of Zitao's older brother, Yifan, who was in his last year of school, was such big news.  
Zitao didn't come to breakfast the morning that Yifan left. He didn't show up in public at all until late afternoon, and then his eyes had the unmistakable red rims of someone who had been crying.

Sehun saw it up close and personal, because Zitao was waiting for him after his last period class. "You want to be the twelfth boy?" Zitao asked, oblivious or intentionally ignoring the blatant stares of the boys coming out of the classroom behind them.

Sehun couldn't believe what was happening. He didn't understand why Zitao had picked him and not one of the hundreds of other boys at S.M. Boys who had been there for much longer; who had been campaigning for Zitao's affection for months. Boys who had more powerful parents; who had private planes to fly Zitao and his friends out of the country if they wanted. Sehun's family was well off - he wouldn't be at S.M. if they weren't - but in comparison to the rest of the students, he fell squarely in the middle. Perhaps that was why Zitao's invitation gave Sehun a sense of raw satisfaction, as if he had made this come true because of the strength of his desire, as if he had created a physical arrow from his craving and shot it straight into Zitao's heart.

"Yes," Sehun said, and Zitao's bow-shaped lips turned up in the tiniest of grins. He gestured for Sehun to follow him outside.

The trees in the quad had shed half their leaves by now, and with the wind picking up, it was likely they'd lose quite a few more before the end of the day. The nearly-naked branches stood stark against the slate-gray sky as Zitao led him to a nearby bare oak tree in the center of the quad, and Sehun understood that the first thing he'd have to do was survive the hungry gazes of all the students streaming out of the buildings all around them. He shook his hair, blown by the chilly breeze, out of his face and looked at Zitao, trying to act as if he didn't care even when his heart was pounding in his chest hard enough to shatter his ribcage.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sehun thought he saw a man, too large to be a student, standing nearby. His shadow stretched across the browning grass as though the sun was behind him, but the sky remained dull as unpolished river rocks, and when he turned his head, there was no one there. Only Zitao was watching him, his eyes the color of onyx stones, fringed by lashes as dark as his thick hair. Sehun found himself wondering if he dyed it to achieve the blue-black color, the same as a sky at midnight.

"These are the rules," Zitao began, snapping Sehun out of the reverie he'd slipped into looking into his eyes. "First, you will tell no one about anything I'm about to say. Do you agree?"

"I agree," Sehun said, and wondered if your heart could actually explode from nervous anticipation.

"Second - Once you're in, you're in. There's no backing out, no matter what happens. Do you agree?"

The curiosity that had burned within him at Han Geng's shop only burned brighter. "Sure."

"You have to say 'I agree'," Zitao said, his liquid voice sounding mildly irritated.

"I agree," Sehun said, puzzled.

"Good." Zitao drew in a breath. "Third - You do what I tell you. We are not a democracy. But if you follow the rules, I'll watch out for you. Agree?"

Now Sehun hesitated. He didn't like being told what to do. He thought he saw the shadow again, but this time there were wings unfolding from it. He took a step back instinctively.

"Sehun," His name in Zitao's voice was like smoke flowing over him, like velvet against his ears. "Sehun."

The shadow was gone. He turned back to Zitao. There was a feverish insistence in the other boy's eyes that made Sehun's contrary nature soften. He felt as if the only thing he had ever wanted was to make Zitao happy. "I agree."

Zitao's shoulders slumped uncharacteristcally, and for a second he didn't look invincible, only tired. But the moment passed as quickly as it had come, and Sehun found himself wondering if he was imagining things. "Good. Then go back to your room and pack your stuff. Bring it over to the Castle before lights out."

"Tonight? But - Don't I have to fill out paperwork or something?"

Zitao smirked, the corner of his mouth twisting up in a way Sehun thought should be sinful. "I'll take care of it. I take care of things for you now, okay? You move in tonight. You can stay in my brother's room."

"Where'd your brother go?" Sehun asked, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth he wanted to snatch them right back.

The smirk dropped from Zitao's face, replaced by a look of cold impassivity. "None of your business. Go and get ready. We're going out tonight." He began to stalk off, headed towards the administration building.

"Wait," Sehun called after him. "What do I - Wear? Is there a dress code?"

Zitao glanced over his shoulder but didn't slow down. "Wear something... Black."

A blackbird fluttered down from the branch of the oak tree above Sehun's head and landed on the ground a few feet away. It turned to look at him as it folded its wings across its body, and Sehun felt a deep, dark, cold inside, as if he had just shaken hands with something he did not understand.

 

* * *

 

Yifan's room was on the third floor of the Castle, and he had left his sheets and blankets on the bed. The first thing Sehun did was swap out Yifan's plain black sheets for his own blue ones. As Sehun changed out of his school uniform and into black jeans and a black t-shirt, he had the unsettling feeling that the room wasn't empty. It still smelled like another boy's shampoo.

There was a knock on the door and Sehun jumped, feeling the guilty feeling that he was about to be caught somewhere he shouldn't be before he remembered that yes, this was his room now.

"Sehun. You ready? Party's starting." Zitao's voice floated through the door.

"Coming," Sehun answered, and he checked his hair one last time in the mirror, making sure he didn't look as stupid as he thought he felt. He had always thought of himself as confident; Never been a wallflower. Tonight, though, he was nervous. The anticipation of what might happen spread through his stomach and made his toes curl and muscles clench.

The boys were all waiting in Zitao's room when Sehun arrived. "Say hey to Sehun," Zitao said, putting a hand on Sehun's shoulder. Sehun felt as if he was going to catch on fire as each one of the boys did introduce themselves. Luhan, Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, Jongdae, Joonmyun, Minseok, Jongin, Yixing. Sehun was glad he'd followed instructions and worn black, because it was clearly the favorite color. Black jeans, black leather, black tanks, black button-downs, black boots, black eyeliner on a few of the boys. The only spot of color was their hair - which was every dress-code breaking shade from white to pink to blue to red and jet black - and the jewelry they each wore. Joonmyun had a shining steel cuff embedded with blue stones on his right wrist. Chanyeol kept his long hair secured in a leather tie studded with garnets. Luhan wore a diamond in one of his ears. Zitao had a gold ring set with a faceted black jewel on his left hand. Every time he raised his hand, the shadows in the stone seemed to shift.

They passed around a bottle of vodka while they waited for midnight. "We don't go out till then," Minseok informed Sehun. Sehun's mouth grew numb from the liquor and he wondered if he was going to be drunk before the party even started, but then Zitao put the bottle away and it was time.

"These are the rules," Zitao began, and Sehun felt as if he were saying them only for his sake - The other boys looked as if they knew the drill already and wanted to get on with it. "We have to return by three in the morning. No exceptions, ever. And nobody brings anything back with them."

Sehun noded, and then Zitao did something Sehun in no way expected: he pushed his bed aside along on well-worn grooves on the wooden floor, revealing a trapdoor set into the ground below. Zitao lifted the door's black iron ring and pulled it up, and Sehun saw a flight of stairs descending into the dark, and wondered if he was seeing things because of the vodka. They were on the third floor of the Castle. There was nowhere for those stairs to go except down to the second floor.

Nobody questioned it, so Sehun didn't either. As the boys began to troop down the stairs, Zitao caught his eye. "Don't forget what you agreed to, Sehun."

Warmth suffused his skin, as if he'd stepped into a patch of sunlight when Zitao spoke to him. "I won't," Sehun said, and he stepped into the hole in the floor beneath Zitao's bed.

The stairs seemed to go on forever - well past the point where they should have struck the first floor. Zitao gripped the metal railing along the wall as he followed the boys ahead of him, listening to them chatter about where they were going, who would be there, and whether the music would be good. "It's always good," said one of them - Jongdae? - and the others laughed in agreement, their voices throaty and echoing in the dim stairway.

Finally the stairs ended in a steel door like an emergency exit, and Baekhyun pushed the bar to open it. They spilled out into a rain-slicked alley that smelled faintly of gasoline and sweet smoke. As Sehun looked around, the world seemed to spin. He didn't understand how they could have climbed all the way down those stairs from beneath Zitao's bed to emerge in this alley in a city that was clearly not Naju.

"Where are we?" Sehun asked, feeling dizzy.

He felt his knees go weak and Zitao grabbed his arm, steadying him. "This way," he said, and led Sehun down the alley to another door. There was a poster taped to it that depicted a stylized boy's face with spiky hair and a big, full mouth. Across the place where his eyes should be where four letters: _AARU_. Zitao reached for the handle of the door and pulled it open, sending music blasting into the alley as if it had been waiting for them.

Sehun and the other boys followed Zitao inside. In front of a velvet curtain, a bouncer waited with a flashlight. Zitao pulled Sehun forward. "He's new. He's the twelfth boy."  
The bouncer swept his flashlight over Zitao's hand, and his ring seemed to pulse. He turned the light on Sehun's face. Wincing at the brightness, he blinked rapidly, and for a moment the bouncer seemed to have hollow black pits in place of eyes. The flashlight moved to the next boy, and the bouncer's eyes were back to normal. Sehun blinked again.

"All right," the bouncer said, sounding bored.

Zitao grabbed Sehun's arm again. "Come on," he said, and pulled him through the velvet curtain.

It was like stepping into another world. The music was overpowering, the bass so heavy it seemed to snake up his body from the floor to shake him from the inside out. The lights that strobed over the crowd obscured as much as they revealed: dancers in glitter and vinyl and fur, their bodies glinting with metal in places he would never have thought to pierce, their hair caught up in crowns and headdresses that looked like antlers. Instead of mirrored disco balls, there were trees made of glass rising from the floor, reflecting the lights. Crystal leaves hung from the clear branches overhead, making it seem as if the ceiling was heaving in time to the music.

The other boys slipped around Sehun and Zitao, disappearing into the crowd. Zitao - who was still holding Sehun's wrist as if he were a child - leaned over to say, "This is the main room. There are two more. I'll show you." Then he began to lead Sehun around the edge of the massive dance floor.

The next room seemed to be made of gold. The walls were hammered gold, and gold leaves hung from weeping golden willows while golden spotlights illuminated a dancer in a cage hanging above the crowd, his naked body painted gold. After that was the room made of silver: curving silver tree trunks, silver leaves that shivered in the warm, perfumed air, silver strobe lights that made every dancer's skin look like platinum. Zitao took Sehun toward the bar in the silver room, and when he let go of him, he realized that sometime during their circuit of the club, Zitao had switched to holding his hand.

Zitao leaned close, and Sehun felt a bright surge of warmth spike through him when Zitao's lips brushed his ear. "I have to go look for someone. I'll come back for you before three. You should have a drink." Zitao pressed a goblet into Sehun's hand, and before he could object, Zitao and the pressure of his body against Sehun's and the heat of his breath on his ear was gone.

The goblet was made of heavy gold and encrusted with jewels; it was the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a fairytale castle, not in a nightclub. Sehun stared at the reflected lights in the shimmering burgundy liquid and sniffed it suspiciously. He still felt tipsy from the vodka and wasn't sure if he should mix it with this... Wine. He looked out into the crowd, wondering where Zitao had vanished to so quickly, but he couldn't find him. He couldn't see any of the other boys from the Castle, either. He was about to put the goblet down - he had a sudden urge to look for Zitao, a sudden desire to feel his steady presence against him - when a boy he didn't recognize appeared in front of him. He had spiky blue hair and both of his arms were covered in tattoos that seemed to swim in his vision, and was holding a gold goblet like Sehun's.

"Hey, you're new here," he shouted over the music. He smiled at him, and he stared at him, unexpectedly transfixed. He clinked his goblet with Sehun's and took a sip of his drink. Without thinking, Sehun mirrored him, raising his own goblet to his lips. The wine was bracing - cool and sharp, as if he had inhaled a breath of winter.

He didn't remember much of what happened after that, but he did remember the boy taking the empty goblet out of his hand and saying in his ear, "Dance with me." His words slid like honey down Sehun's throat, and he let him lead him onto the dance floor beneatht he silver leaves. He was lithe and beautiful and he tasted as sharp and crisp as an icy gust of wind when he kissed him. The music seemed to embed itself in his body beat after beat, and he felt as if he could dance with this unnamed boy forever and never be sated.

And then Zitao was back, pulling him away from the boy and saying "Come on, Sehun, time to go." And Sehun stumbled through the crowd, his fingers laced tightly with Zitao's, and he couldn't remember why he had ever wanted to dance with that boy in the first place.

 

* * *

 

Sehun awoke the next morning in Zitao's brother's room, feeling like his head had been stuffed with cotton balls. He glanced at the clock and realized that he had already missed breakfast and most of history class, but when he ran across campus and burst into the classroom, tie undone and rumpled shirt untucked, the teacher didn't even notice.

It took almost all day for Sehun to shake off his hangover. It wasn't until the others were back in Zitao's room that night, passing the vodka bottle around again, that he felt as if he had finally returned to the real world just in time to leave it once again.

At midnight, Zitao reminded them of the rules: Be back by 3:00 A.M., and nobody could bring anything back with them. He pushed the bed aside and pulled up the trapdoor, and once more the flight of stairs was revealed. Sehun was prepared for a long descent but tonight it was different - tonight the stairs ended after only ten steps, delivering the twelve boys into a tunnel dug out of the earth. Sehun didn't understand how it was possible because judging by the amount of steps they took they should only be on the second floor, but the ceiling was earthen and roots seemed to grow out of the walls.

"It wasn't like this yesterday, was it?" Sehun whispered over his shoulder to Yixing, the kindest, who was the most likely to answer his question.

"Sometimes it's different," was all Yixing said.

Sehun wanted to ask how - or why - but he knew somehow that he shouldn't, that he was meant to accept it, the same way that he had accepted the rules Zitao had laid out. He kept walking and swallowed his questions.

The tunnel ended in a short flight of steps that led to an ancient-looking wooden door. Zitao lifted the latch on the iron handle as if everything was totally normal, and the door opened onto the same city alley, though this time the air smelled inexplicably of freshly turned dirt and moss. The entrance to the club bore a different poster tonight, a black tree drawn like a tattoo with gothic letters spelling out words Sehun couldn't pronounce - _Magh Meall_.

Inside, the club had changed in ways that made Sehun wonder if he had simply remembered it wrong. The first room had trees of gold, not glass, and instead of a caged dancer hanging from the ceiling were aerial acrobats, bare legs wrapped around rippling golden silk. Sehun gazed at them as the music thudded through him, rattling his bones, and he decided that he wouldn't drink the wine tonight, because tomorrow he wanted to remember this place.

He turned to look for Zitao, but he was nowhere in sight. Sehun began to push his way through the dancers, searching for him - The need he felt to be close to him was overwhelming. Strangers' hands brushed against him, their fingers sweeping over his bare arms, and when he looked down he saw trails of gold dust on his skin. A woman with long ropes of green hair reached out to him, urging him to dance, and she smelled like the ocean, salty and clean. Although Sehun wanted to stay with her, to step into her arms and lose himself in her, he forced himself to remember what he was after: Zitao. He had to find Zitao. Sehun pulled away from the woman, whose face suddenly looked contorted into anger, and when she snarled at Sehun, her teeth looked like fangs.

Recoiling, Sehun's gaze darted around the room, seeking anyone familiar who could explain what he had seen. Finally he glimpsed Zitao slipping through the doorway into the next room. "Zitao!" Sehun shouted, but his voice was lost in the pounding music. He went after him, pressing against the walls so he could avoid the dancers, but when he entered the next room - silver trees, lit with pulsing red-and-white strobe lights - he had lost him again.

Someone grabbed his elbow and he spun around, heart racing. It was Jongin. "You okay?" Jongin asked.

"I'm looking for Zitao," Sehun said. "Is it three yet?"

Jongin shook his head. "We've only been here about fifteen minutes."

That didn't feel right. Sehun felt sick to his stomach.

Jongin saw his confusion and frowned, his full mouth growing tight. "Let me get you a drink." He led Sehun into a curtained alcove along the wall - there were many of them, mostly full of couples - and pushed him inside. "Wait here."

When the curtain fell, it muffled some of the music. The low red lights inside the alcove felt like being inside someone's heart, with the slight shaking of the curtains mimicking the pulsing and beating. Sehun's skin itched, and he rubbed at his forearms idly until he realized something was sloughing off. He looked down in horror, but it wasn't his skin; it was the glitter.

Jongin returned with two goblets - still gold and jewel-encrusted - and sat down beside him. "Here," Jongin said, handing him the heavy drink. "You need this."

Sehun took the goblet but didn't drink. "It gave me a wicked hangover last night."

"You get used to it," Jongin shrugged, sipping from his own goblet.

"Where's Zitao?" Sehun asked.

"Why? You have a thing for him?"

Sehun's face grew hot. "What?"

"It's okay. Everyone has a thing for him at first." Jongin sounded resigned.

"Did you?" Sehun asked, not sure he wanted to know.

Jongin shrugged. "Sure. We were together for a while, but that's over."

"Do you know where he is?" Sehun asked again. It was the only thing he could remember, as if his mind was stuck on repeat, a record being scratched by an erratic needle.  
Jongin didn't respond at first, instead studying him carefully, his dark eyes raking over Sehun as if he could see right through him. Sehun clutched his goblet with both hands, the jewels digging into his skin and he wished - _willed_ \- Jongin to answer his question.

Finally Jongin said, "Zitao's looking for his brother."

 _Yifan_. "I thought he left school," Sehun said.

"No," Jongin said, drawing out the word like a question, and for a moment he looked frightened. He took another drink of his wine, more a gulp than a sip. "He came to the club with us a few nights ago, but we couldn't find him when we left."

"You mean he stayed here?"

"I don't know. Zitao thinks he can find him, but..." Jongin took another sip, as if the drink seemed to calm him. "Taemin and Key stayed too, and we haven't found them."

Sehun rubbed a hand over his forehead, as if it could clear the fuzziness from his brain. His head felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton. "You mean all three of them stayed here? They never - Returned? How come nobody talks about that at school? They just say they transferred."

"They didn't transfer," was all Jongin said, flatly.

"Then what happened to them?" Sehun asked. "Why would they stay here? I don't understand."

Jongin sighed. "You're not supposed to know this," There was deliberation in his voice. "At least, not yet. You can't tell anyone that you know. You sure as shit can't tell Zitao."

Sehun was mystified. "Why did you tell me, then?"

Jongin looked annoyed, the set of his jaw was hard. "I don't agree with everything Zitao decides. And you're one of us now - or you will be tomorrow. You might as well know."

"What do you mean about tomorrow?" Sehun asked. "Aren't I one of you already? I promised Zitao I'd do what he wanted."

"Tomorrow everything will be finalized. Third time's the charm." Jongin took another drink. "I shouldn't have said anything." He stood, his head nearly brushing the ceiling of the curtained alcove, and his eyes were hidden in shadows. "I'll see you later. I have to dance."

The way he said it - _I have to dance_ \- was so strange, as if he was being compeled to do it. Sehun watched Jongin leave and then he put his own goblet of wine down on the floor. Bit by bit, like a knife scraping frost off a windowpane, he was beginning to see - The place, the beautiful horror of it all. As the music pounded around the curtain, Sehun was left wondering what he got himself into.

 

* * *

 

Sehun woke to the repetitive screeching of his alarm at 7:00 A.M. and shut it off quickly with a heavy slam of his hand. The rest of the Castle was silent; the other boys probably wouldn't wake up for hours. Sehun threw off his blankets and got dressed as if he was walking through a fog. He didn't feel as hungover as he had the day before, but there was definitely something wrong with his perceptions. The real world seemed blurry.

He threw his laptop into his messenger bag and walked through the chilly late-October air to the dining hall. As he passed the quad, a flock of blackbirds took off from the old oak tree, the beat of their wings loud in the still, silent morning.

The dining hall was beginning to fill with students as Sehun poured himself a giant cup of coffee and took a seat alone at the table usually reserved for Zitao's group, opening his laptop. Three boys had stayed behind at that club - Kim Kibum, Lee Taemin, and Zitao's older brother, Yifan. Sehun searched their names online, looking for evidence of how or even if their disappearances had been reported. Key and Taemin both had Facebook pages, but Key's was private, so he couldn't find anything out about him aside from the most basic of information. Taemin's, however, was mostly public; his page was filled with messages from people saying they missed him and were worried about him. Oddly, none of the messages appered to be from any S.M. students. One was from someone Sehun identified as Taemin's sister, saying "We're looking for you, Tae. Please come home." It took Sehun a while to read through Taemin's cluttered timeline, but the last update he had posted had been back in August. "Can't wait to party with the guys again!"

Where had Taemin gone? Sehun thought about the posters on the door to the club in the alley. He couldn't remember how to spell the name that had been on the flyer the night before, but he remembered the four letters from the first night: _AARU_. He entered the word into the search bar and felt his tired eyes widen. Aaru was a word from Egyptian mythology: A heavenly paradise where souls could exist in pleasure for eternity. Similar to - Elysium, Avalon, Magh Meall. He caught his breath and clicked on the link to Magh Meall and read - "From Irish mythology, a pleasurable realm to be accessed by only a select few... A place of eternal beauty... occasionally visited by mortals."

Sehun stared at the screen, his already-cottony mouth going dry. The places he was reading about were myths, fairytales. It wasn't possible for them to exist, but it wasn't possible for a stairway to open up beneath Zitao's bed, either, and lead to a city where there shouldn't be one.

It had been real, hadn't it? Sehun thought about the dancers, the wine, the music, the boy he had kissed. If it wasnt real, he was coming unhinged, and that was even more disturbing than the idea that Zitao had somehow found a magical door to another world.

By the time breakfast was over and the students began leaving for class, Sehun knew what he had to do, and was at the school gates walking off campus before he even realized he had gotten up from the dining table. Technically, he wasn't allowed to go off campus during the school day, but he knew no one would stop him. He was one of Zitao's now.

The walk into Naju cleared away more of the fogginess in his head. When he arrived at Han Geng's Fortunes & Favors, he felt almost entirely real again.

Sehun had wondered if it was too early for the shop to be open, but Han Geng appeared to be expecting him. "Welcome back," the man said as Sehun entered the shop.

"I need to know what the hell is going on with Zitao and his friends," Sehun said, and the ferocity in his own voice surprised him. "You told me they were dangerous. What did you mean?"

Han Geng didn't seem surprised. "Come sit down," was all he said, leading them to the back room.

"What is that place Zitao takes us to?" Sehun asked, lowering himself into the chair at the round table where he'd had his palm read. "It's not this world, is it? How is that possible?"

Han Geng sat down at the table. "It is not our world, no."

Sehun felt a brief flush of relief to hear that Han Geng knew exactly what he was talking about, and apprehension that he did.

"But it is entwined with ours, yes," Han Geng continued. "Zitao has found a way to enter it."

"How?"

"He has made some sort of bargain. I don't know the exact details, but he will have to have agreed to something."

"Does it have anything to do with the boys who stayed behind? Taemin and Key and Yifan?"

"There is always a price to pay for entry to that world, and that is the traditional price."

"Are you saying that those boys were forced to stay there? That they're... Payment?" Sehun felt nauseous, like the room was spinning. "That's insane."

Han Geng folded his hands on the table. "As I said, I don't know precisely what Zitao has agreed to, but he may be getting something out of it that we are not aware of. Nobody strikes this kind of bargain without a great need of his own."

"What could possibly be worth kidnapping three boys?" Sehun couldn't believe it of Zitao - Didn't want to believe it. "Someone must be making him do it. How do I get him to stop?"

Han Geng looked at him with what seemed to be pity in his shrewd eyes.

"Tell me how. Tell me how and I'll do it. For him," The last words slipped out, and Sehun felt a flush creep across his neck, but Han Geng only nodded.

"This is what you must do: You must take something dead from the other world and bring it to life in this one."

Sehun's forehead wrinkled. "How am I supposed to do that? What does that even mean?"

"It is a riddle," Han Geng said, his ringed fingers spreading across the worn wood of the table. "And it is a test. If you can decipher it, then you are the one who will break the curse. If you cannot..." He trailed off, raising one open hand as if he were letting something unseen fly away.

"The curse remains unbroken," Sehun whispered, and his voice sounded paper-thin even to his own ears.

Han Geng leaned forward. "Tonight is your last opportunity to do this."

"Why?"

"After tonight, you will have entered the other world three times. You will have sealed your own bargain, and you will not be able to break it."

Sehun remembered what Jongin had told him, and he remembered that afternoon in the quad under the tree with Zitao, saying " _I agree_ " three times. He could practically feel the golden chains of that other world tightening around his throat.

"Tomorrow morning," Han Geng continued. "if you have not broken the curse, you will be given your own talisman to mark your acquiescence to the curse."

Sehun remembered the boys' jewelry - Bracelets and necklaces and rings and earrings that all seemed to come from the same jeweler. Part of Sehun still wanted to be one of them, handsome and otherworldy and untouchable, but the thought of being bound to that _place_ repulsed him.

"I'll break it tonight." Sehun said, sounding more sure than he felt. "Will Taemin and Key and Yifan be able to return with me?"

"I don't know. They struck their own bargains when they stayed."

"But they could return?" Hope made Sehun feel sick to his stomach.

"It depends on how deeply they've fallen for the other world, whether they have strong enough ties to this one. It's possible, but it's not up to you."

Sehun stood. "Okay," And he couldn't help himself from asking, "How do you know all this?"

Han Geng's thin mouth turned up in a self-mocking smile. "I broke the curse myself when I was your age. You boys are not the first to discover the allure of that other world, and you won't be the last."

 

* * *

 

The tunnel to the other world was the same that night, and the sign on the door in the alley said _Magh Meall_ again. Sehun wondered if they were truly entering that mythical world, or if whoever ran the nightclub thought of that name was a clever joke. Inside, the club was as crowded as before, but tonight Sehun could see that the dancers were not wearing costumes. What he had actually thought was clothing made of unusual materials was actually skin: skin covered in scales, skin erupting with downy feathers, skin rippling with spiny ridges the color of gold.

As the other boys disappeared into the cacaphony of the club, Sehun kept his eyes open, searching for anything that might solve Han Geng's riddle. In the room with the crystal trees, there was a band playing on a stage Sehun hadn't noticed before. The lead singer was a beautiful woman with long golden blonde hair, her impossibly violet eyes outlined in the shape of stars. Sehun edged around the room, studying the crowd gathered at the bar. Most of the people were watching the show, but one of them, a man with tattoos of tiger stripes that running up his wiry arms had turned his back to the stage. He raised a cigarette to his mouth and plucked a matchbook from a glass bowl on the bar, and when he struck the flame, Sehun thought he saw his eyes had the slitted pupils of a cat.

The tiger man tossed his matchbook back into the bowl after he lit his cigarette, then vanished into the crowd on the dance floor, heading towards a girl with a shock of short blue hair - and insect wings at rest against her back? - near the far corner of the room. Sehun crept into the gap he left at the bar, taking the stool he had vacated. The glass bowl nearby was brimming with matchbooks, and when he lifted one out, he saw it was stamped with the words that had been on the poster on the door - _Magh Meall._

Sehun tore his gaze away from the tree emblazoned on the paper of the matchbook and tucked it into the front pocket of his jeans, feeling the square press into his hipbone from the tightness of the material. When he turned around, Zitao was standing only a foot away from him, and Sehun jumped in surprise.

Zitao's jet eyes were rimmed in kohl tonight, and they narrowed, reflecting the strobe lights. He looked suspicious. "What're you doing?" He asked.

Sehun thought fast. "Looking for you." He slid off the stool and reached for Zitao's hand. Zitao didn't move, he only continued to scrutinize Sehun's face. "You want to dance?" Sehun asked, and pulled Zitao towards the dance floor anyway.

Sehun hadn't had anything to drink tonight - he had even avoided the vodka upstairs - but the music was intoxicating enough. There was something hypnotic about the woman onstage's voice, as if she gave Sehun permission to do whatever he wanted, and there was something hypnotic about dancing with Zitao, too. The movement of his muscles beneath the slippery fabric of his tank top, the warm flushed skin of Zitao's upper back, the soft tickle of Zitao's thick black hair against the curve of Sehun's neck as he seemed to wind himself around Sehun. After a while it didn't even feel like they were moving anymore. The dancers around them were moving; the bass from the band was shuddering; the lights above were flashing. But the two of them stood motionless, their bodies pressed together, and Sehun closed his eyes so he could feel Zitao better, as if he could shut out the dream world all around them and make this something real. As their lips touched, it felt like the world came to a halt, and it was like lightning was striking in Sehun's brain. Zitao wound himself tighter around Sehun, crushing his body against his, as if he could absorb them into the moment and never have to draw back again; his mouth hard and needy against Sehun's. Sehun felt like he could stay there forever, against Zitao, in the other world in between, and just _forget_.

The voice in Sehun's ear seemed to come at him from a very great distance when it came, the sound of it bubbling up from the depths of a dark sea until he felt someone else's hand - not Zitao's - on his shoulder, shaking him. "Sehun. Sehun! It's time to go."

He blinked his eyes open, and Zitao peeled himself away, withdrawing his knee from between Sehun's legs and removing his hand from within his tank top. Beside them, Jongin was shaking his head as if he had caught two children misbehaving.

"Come on," Jongin said. He glared at Zitao. "You should know better."

Zitao's cheeks were flushed and his lips looked raw and kiss-reddened, his hair rumpled, belt undone. He shook his head. "What time is it?"

"It's time," Jongin said in a clipped voice.

Zitao swore. "Let's go."

Sehun's legs wobbled as he followed the boys out of the club. Zitao didn't even give him a second glance as he stalked through the crowd. Out in the alley, the night air was freezing against his skin and the air smelled of dirt and the promise of snow. Still, Zitao didn't look back. He threw open the door to the stairs and the other boys followed in a drowsy silence. Only Jongin gave Sehun a meaningful glance back as he pulled the door shut behind him, and then it was too dark to do anything but pay attention to where he was walking.

When they arrived back in Zitao's room, Sehun headed for the exit with everyone else, he felt completely disoriented, and he could still taste the heat and spice of Zitao's mouth. He had been drinking the wine.

"Sehun," Zitao called out in a hoarse voice. "Wait."

Sehun stopped, his heart thumping uncomfortably against his chest. "What?"

When all the other boys had gone, Zitao shut the door so that it was only the two of them. Zitao turned to face him and Sehun's heart raced. This was the real world, he reminded himself. Whatever happened here was real. It scared him, how much he wanted it to be real.

He had forgotten that he wanted to break whatever curse Zitao was under. He had forgotten that Key and Taemin and Zitao's own brother might have disappeared because of what Zitao had done. All he could remember was what it felt like to dance with him.

Zitao went to his dresser and pulled out a tissue, wiping the smudged kohl from his eyes and the sweat from his brow. Then he was in front of Sehun, who was standing right where he had been when Zitao asked him to wait, and kissed him.

Real: Zitao's bow-shaped lips, slightly dry now, his tongue tasting like wine. Real: Zitao's hands on the hem of Sehun's t-shirt, lifting it and tossing it to the floor. Real: Zitao's body against his, warm and soft.

Sehun reached for Zitao's slippery shirt and Zitao raised his arms so he could peel it off. Zitao had a tattoo of a blackbird over his heart and Sehun bent his head to kiss it, tasting the salty sweat on his skin. Zitao's breath was uneven as he slid his long fingers into the waistband of Sehun's jeans, tugging them down over his hips. Sehun arched his back and pressed forward into Zitao's touch and something tumbled from the pocket of Sehun's jeans and skittered onto the wood floor.

Sehun froze.

"What was that?" Zitao whispered.

"Nothing," Sehun lied, hoping that Zitao wouldn't notice, would take him back into his arms.

But the matchbook had fallen into the circle of light cast by Zitao's bedside lamp, and the words printed on it practically glowed: _Magh Meall_.

Sehun remembered the curse and the riddle, and the sticky sweet desire that had made him dizzy only seconds before turned sour.

Zitao jerked away from him as if he'd been burned. "What did you do?" There was fear in his voice.

Sehun lunged for the matchbook a moment before Zitao did. Sehun's knees banged against the floor; Zitao's nails scaped over his arms. Sehun scrambled away, his fingers trembling as he opened the matchbook.

"Stop it!" Zitao cried.

Sehun didn't stop. He tore out a match and struck it, and the flame flared to life.

_Something dead from that world, brought into life in this one._

The smell of sulfur seemed to fill the room, the flame of the match burning blue. Sehun saw it reflected in Zitao's dark eyes, earlier so full of desire, now replaced by horror.

"What did you do?" Zitao demanded, his hand shooting out to grab Sehun's wrist.

The ground shifted beneath them. The bed moved. Zitao tried to stop it, but it rolled back over the trapdoor in the floor and when he tried to push it back he couldn't. He screamed in frustration, bending down to look beneath, and his shoulders heaved. Sehun knew that the trapdoor was gone.

The match burned out, scorching Sehun's fingertips, and he dropped it to the floor.

Zitao stood, the planes of his face hard with fury. "Why did you do that? You fucked everything up!"

Sehun's heart was pounding so hard he was breathless. "I had to break the curse," was all he could say.

"You don't know what you did," Zitao snapped, his face twisted with anger.

The disgust in Zitao's voice made Sehun angry. He scrambled up to his feet. "I couldn't let it keep happening! I couldnt let them keep taking the boys!"

Suddenly Zitao sat down on the edge of the bed, his face dropping into his hands, shoulders sagging. "I never wanted them to take anyone, but that was the price."

"For what? What was so important you'd let those boys get kidnapped? Your own brother!"

"I did it _for_ Yifan," Zitao snarled, and his head snapped up, full of rage. "So he could stay here at the Soo fucking Man School for rich assholes. We would have been kicked out for not paying tuition if I hadn't made that deal."

Sehun felt himself taking a step back, his hands half raised in shock. "What do you mean? Your dad is loaded," his voice was weak.

Zitao gave a choked laugh. "That's what everybody thinks, but no. Our dad was the janitor here. While he worked here we got to come here for free, but after he died last year, that was it. We were going to be kicked out. But where would we go? To live with our deadbeat mom, back in China? She has no money and spends what she does have on drugs. The only way I could keep Yifan here - to keep him safe, to keep his college offers, to give him a chance to _make_ something of himself - was to make a deal with that guy. But now you've fucked it all up! He said they wouldn't take Yifan. He said -" He broke off and looked at Sehun furiously, his black eyes shining with tears like wet chips of onyx. "And now he's gone, and I can't find him. He'll never make a deal with me again. All thanks to _you_."

Sehun's stomach felt like it dropped ten stories through the floor. His palms were sweaty, his lips dry. Had he made a mistake? "He might come back - Han Geng said -"

"Nobody comes back once they take them," Zitao interrupted, his voice sounding like dry paper. He looked utterly defeated.

"I'm - I'm sorry," Sehun whispered.

Zitao wouldn't look at him, and after the silence between them became too awful to bear, Sehun snatched up his shirt and left. He couldn't stop shaking, even after he climbed into Yifan's bed and buried his head beneath the covers.

 

* * *

 

Things began to change immediately. Zitao was reprimanded by the headmaster for wearing boots to class. The paperwork that Zitao has said he'd take care of to have Sehun move to the Castle turned out to be forged, and Sehun had to move back to his old dorm. The other boys in the Castle began to be called into teacher meetings to discuss their many absences.

Halloween came and went in a gust of wind and rain, stripping the last remaining leaves off the trees. Every time Sehun walked by the old oak tree where he had made his promises to Zitao he felt someone watching him, but it was only the blackbird that seemed to have made his home there. Once he thought he saw a tall, thin man in the shadows of the tree but as soon as he noticed him the air itself seemed to shift, as if someone were pulling a shade closed.

Zitao's friends began to drift apart, too, turning inward and barely eating at meals. Rumors went around that they had been doing some serious drugs and now their supply had been cut off and they were all going through withdrawls. And everyone whispered the shocking news about Zitao: that his father wasn't some fabulously rich businessman, but the former janitor; that he might have to leave at the end of the semester because he had no money for tuition.

Sehun felt bruised inside, as if he had lost something, not saved the lives of the other boys. For weeks, he went through the motions of school and homework in a daze, half awake, half still caught in the dream world he had visited. At night, when he slept - if he slept - he dreamed of glittering gold trees, the throbbing music, and Zitao.

All through November, Zitao faded. He had been vivid before, unbreakable, and now he was more ghostly every day. His skin, his eyes, his hair - Pale, dull, limp. Sehun realized that he might have broken the curse, but he had also broken Zitao.

The day Zitao didn't show up for breakfast, none of the students noticed at first. It wasn't until lunch, when Sehun heard others whispering about how nobody had seen Zitao since the night before that Sehun started to wonder if something had happened. He walked across the quad toward the Castle, his feet crunching over the blades of browned grass. He passed the oak tree and saw the blackbird was gone. Inside Castle, the dorm was quiet and empty. Everyone was supposed to be in class and Sehun knew he would be reprimanded for skipping, but he was drawn up the stairs to Zitao's room just as he had been drawn to Zitao from the beginning. Zitao's door was closed, and when Sehun knocked, there was no answer. He put his hand on the doorknob and it turned easily.

There was a creak behind him.

Sehun spun around, an excuse on his lips, but the sight of the boy across the hall stopped him short. He looked like Zitao, but older, broader, taller. His face was gaunt, as if he had been living on nothing but air for much too long, and his eyes were dark yet unnaturally bright.

"Who are you?" Sehun asked, afraid that he already knew.

"I'm Yifan," Zitao's brother said. His voice was achingly similar to Zitao's, but much deeper.

Sehun's skin crawled as if bugs were inside of him. "Where's Zitao?"

"He traded himself for me." Yifan said. There was a haunted flatness to Yifan's speech, as if he was a doll that had just come awkwardly to life.

Everything inside Sehun went cold, as if winter was blooming inside his chest. He opened Zitao's door and barged into his room. It was empty. The bed was rumpled and a pile of dirty clothes lay on the floor next to the dresser. Sehun ran to the bed and pushed it, but it wouldn't move. He knelt to look beneath it, and all he saw was dust.

Yifan came into Zitao's room and went to the dresser, pulling open the drawers one by one. He pulled out his brother's shirts slowly, holding them up to the light before tossing them into the laundry pile.

"What are you doing?" Sehun asked, too shocked to move.

"Looking for something to wear," Yifan replied in his odd, emotionless voice. "Zitao always had the best stuff."

Sehun stared at him in shock. He had been the one who wanted Yifan to come back, but he hadn't expected he would be like this. Yifan might be standing in his brother's room, but he wasn't there.

Yifan found a shirt he liked and laid it on top of the dresser, and took off the one he was wearing. In the mirror, Sehun glimpsed a tattoo of a blackbird on Yifan's chest before he pulled on his brother's shirt. He turned to face Sehun, crossing his arms, and Sehun noticed the ring Yifan was wearing - A stone, black as Zitao's eyes, set in a gold band.

"My brother told me about you," Yifan said.

Sehun swallowed the rising panic inside him and met Yifan's feverish gaze. "Where is he?" Sehun demanded, feeling raw panic clawing up through his throat.

"Someplace a hell of a lot more fun than this." A cold grin crossed Yifan's face, and for one second he came alive - potent, forceful, invincible, just like Zitao. An instant later he shriveled, once again more specter than boy. "We're going there tonight," Yifan said to Sehun, turning his back to him. "You want to come? Zitao might be there."


End file.
